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For my money there is no more reliable pollster than Rasmussen. This shows you how wildly the results vary - http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_ ... andgun_ban" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

All these headlines are on this same page:

52% Want More Gun Control Laws; 10% Favor Handgun Ban
59% Still Think Tougher Gun Control Laws Likely
Americans Strongly Support Tougher Requirements for Gun Owners
43% Rate Obama’s Handling of Gun Control as Good or Excellent
22% See More Gun Control As Best Curb to Mass Murders
57% Think Enforcing Current Gun Laws More Important Than Creating New Laws
Voters Rate Spending, Job Creation Higher in Importance Than Gun Control

Good luck making sense of all that. The results of a poll depend, in large part, on how the questions are asked.

Here's the questions for the first poll mentioned above:
1* Does the United States need stricter gun control laws?

2* Should there be a ban on the purchase of semi-automatic and assault type weapons?

3* Should there be a complete ban on handguns in the United States?

4* Would you feel safer moving to a neighborhood where nobody was allowed to own a gun or a neighborhood where you could have a gun for your own protection?

Notice that these are all questions that require a yes or no answer but don't offer an alternative. The wording is also important. For example, the last question is completely different if you simply drop the last four words.
Would you feel safer moving to a neighborhood where nobody was allowed to own a gun or a neighborhood where you could have a gun?

The second thing that affects a poll is the makeup of the persons questioned. What percent were Democrat? Independent? Republican? Were they registered voters? Likely voters? Plain old Americans?

Pollsters and politicians love to take the results of polls that support their position and extrapolate them to speak for the entire population, even though the questions, the wording of the questions and the makeup of the persons polled determines the results - often in advance of the poll even being taken.

mojo84 wrote:Your thoughts?

http://foxnews.com/politics/2013/03/22/ ... -measures/

It's hard for me to believe that mental health checks has less support than background checks, and all the numbers seem excessively high to me.